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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3464 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The Auditor-General was also given a role in maintaining a register of contracts which contained confidentiality clauses and reporting such contracts to the Public Accounts Committee. Unfortunately, the Auditor-General reported after the first six months of the act's operation that the legislation was not being followed correctly by agencies despite efforts by the Audit Office, the Treasury and the Government Solicitor's Office to inform agencies of their responsibilities. The Auditor had no assurance that all contracts containing confidentiality clauses were being forwarded to him.

The then Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, in its report No 28, commented that it should be the responsibility of chief executive officers, not the Auditor-General, to make sure that the act was complied with. The committee recommended that the act be amended to require chief executive officers to certify that the details of the contracts provided to the Auditor were full and accurate and that there be a formal requirement that agencies provide lists of contracts to the Auditor within 14 days of the end of each six-month reporting period. This bill implements those recommendations.

Before this bill was tabled, the Auditor-General released his own audit into the operation of the act, which concluded that the act "is not effective and is not being administered effectively". He found that not all contracts containing confidentiality clauses were being submitted to the Auditor-General and that most of those that had been submitted did not comply with the act. He found that of the 41 contracts with confidentiality clauses received by the Auditor only five appeared to comply fully with the act. This report confirmed the need for these amendments, and a few more besides, which I assume the government will be taking up at a later date.

Because of the way the legislation was cobbled together from other bills, some procedural issues may have been overlooked. However, it is very worrying that public service agencies appear not to take the legislation seriously and not to be attempting to comply with the spirit of the legislation.

The former Finance and Public Administration Committee certainly made it clear that it was quite worried by the tardiness of agencies in reacting to the new statutory requirements. It said:

Given the amount of information that was made available to agencies about their responsibilities under the Act, the Committee finds it difficult to believe that it is ignorance that has led to this lack of response ...

It is disturbing that the Service may regard statutory requirements that make clear an accountability to the Assembly, through the Auditor-General, as something that can largely be ignored.

I am happy to support these amendments as there are obviously problems with the implementation of the original piece of legislation. I also have two amendments to the bill which relate to when its main provisions will come into effect, as I believe that the problems with this bill should be fixed as soon as possible. I will talk to the amendments in the detail stage.

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